REPORTED to have been the highest-grossing comedian in the world in 2012 with ticket sales of £21 million that year, Londoner Michael McIntyre is a gloriously happy man, if the title of his upcoming roadshow is anything to go by.
His last tour, Showtime, was the biggest-seller in the world in 2012, playing to over 640,000 people – including a 10-night residency at London’s 02 Arena. Now, as he relaxes at home in north London in the run-up to the new tour, Happy & Glorious, he tells us how much he is relishing the prospect heading back on the road.
“I really, really love stand-up. There is huge excitement about having done the work in lots of warm-up shows and knowing that the jokes are funny," he says. “I did a Comedy Gala in Brighton recently to 2,000 people and it was so lovely to be out there again. It’s wonderful to be able to share my new jokes with people.”
The father-of-two has spent the intervening three years concentrating on television work but says: “I can’t wait to be playing once again to a big room that is really enjoying the show. I’m looking forward to thinking, ‘If you’re loving that, wait till you hear this!’ I’m bringing everything to this show – voices, physical comedy, the works. That way, I can really paint pictures on stage.
“If it’s genuinely working, you hit sections that are very funny and the audience just lap it up. I now know that every time I reach a certain bit, they’ll applaud. My job is to get the whole show to that level. I’m so excited about it.”
McIntyre does lots of prep work prior to welcoming audiences into his comic realm.
“The last thing I want to do is just bang the show out,” he says. “I want to say to people, ‘Come into my world’. I want to get them in the palm of my hand.”
So what themes will he be addressing in Happy & Glorious? “You look at the things in my life, and they’ll be my material. Holidays, hotels, motorway services – that’s my life. Anything is ripe for comedy. I’ll be discussing health stuff and the fact that I’ve lost a lot of weight. And as always, I’ll be talking about my children. They’re in my life, and they’ll always be in my jokes.
“I’ve also just bought a house in the country that has given me 20 minutes of material. I used to flick through Country Life magazine – they tend to be in dentists’ waiting rooms. Over the years I’d look at page after page of gorgeous country cottages. It was a fantasy of mine to have an idyllic place in the rolling hills, so finally I bought one. But sadly I didn’t realise what I was getting into.
"When I flush the loo in London, I don’t for a moment think about the plumbing. It just happens. But it turns out that idyllic houses in the middle of nowhere don’t have plumbing. They have septic tanks that you have to empty once a year. They don’t highlight that in the estate agents’ brochures. People always say, ‘the previous owners left all their crap behind.’ Well, I’m literally in that situation.”
McIntyre, who has fronted his own BBC1 programme Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow, and whose career also includes a stint as a judge on Britain's Got Talent in 2011, summarises his hopes for Happy & Glorious in a sentence: “I want to make the audience laugh till their faces hurt.”
:: Michael McIntyre's Happy & Glorious, 3Arena, Dublin, November 6 and 7; the Odyssey Arena, Belfast, November 13 and 14. Tickets usual outlets.
